If listening to Jack Johnson’s music is summer and the beach, chatting with him is the warm afternoon breeze, deck-chair and a cocktail that completes the scene.
If listening to Jack Johnson’s music is summer and the beach, chatting with him is the warm afternoon breeze, deck-chair and a cocktail that completes the scene. In conversation his voice is all sea salt and sand, his tone thoughtful and considered; the phrase ‘incredibly laid-back’ doesn’t quite do him justice, ‘tranquil’ perhaps hits the spot… if tranquil somehow included a successful recording career. And there’s the surfing, of course, with every interview with him starting with a variation on the ’So, have you been surfing today?’ theme, to which he inevitably replies ‘Yes’. So it’s put to him if that is the one single question he is most sick of. “Close, yeah.” he laughs. “It’s right up there… either that one or ‘If you had to give up one, surfing or music, which would one would it be?’”
So instead we plough right into why Johnson thinks so many people connect with his music. “I just read this thing that said dreams are personalised myths and myths are depersonalised dreams that a whole culture can experience,” Johnson replies.
“So you have these myths that might mean something to a whole civilisation, and then you have a dream that only makes sense to you… and thinking about that the chorus of my songs are like the myth part, and the versus are the dreams in a way,” he muses. “So the chorus is the part that people sing along to and connect to the culture at large, and once I have that, I believe I have a song that people might want to listen to.”
His songwriting process is the stuff of dreams for working stiffs like the rest of us as well, being as it’s done sitting out on a board in the warm, blue waters off Hawaii. “As romantic as it sounds, I do actually write quite a bit while I am surfing,” Johnson confesses. “Just because it is one of the times where you don’t have people around, [there’s] no phones ringing.
“It’s not like I write a whole song or anything like that,” he qualifies, “but sometimes I’ll come in from a surf and I’ll have just one line repeating in my head or something like a chorus, or I have finished a song I’ve been working on, trying to get that last line.
“So I do have a lot come to me while I’m surfing,” he grins. “But a lot times it’s after the kids are asleep and the house is quiet, I’ll pick-up a guitar and write. With a guitar in hand, the melody comes and the words then fill in the melody.”
Johnson latest offering, To The Sea, seems to be his most personal work thus far. “Well, I never really pick an album title until all the songs are written,” he says of his fifth studio album. “So when I was looking at all the recurring themes it seemed like so many of the songs were dealing with getting to the ocean, it just seemed like the right thing to do.
“In my mind the whole album is sort of about a spirit travelling through my family,” he adds. “The ocean is where my dad would always take us, and a place I take my kids, so physically the sea is a place that’s real special to our lives.”
Almost as an after thought Johnson adds, “Also my dad passed away last summer and it was the place where we took his ashes, so now every time I visit the ocean I feel like I’m with him, so a big part of it was that.”
Talking for any length to Jack Johnson it becomes clear that this isn’t some throwaway line trotted out for each interviewer; he really is lost without the water. In conversation his thoughts and tangents constantly lead him back to the sea. “I remember when we were kids, we went up to the mountains one time in California on Christmas break,” he says at one point, in reference to nothing in particular. “At a real young age I remember my dad talking to my mom and saying that his body felt uneasy when he got too far from the ocean, and I remember thinking it was funny.
“But as I’ve gotten older, I get that feeling sometimes touring when I get away from the ocean, for a week or so especially; I need to get back. I feel like a fish out of water,” he laughs. “Most all of our family trips where camping by the sea or a boat trip, and a lot of lessons I learned in life from my dad were either out on a boat or with a mask and a snorkel, we spent a lot of time in the ocean growing up.”
Sea salt and sand are seemingly in his blood, and you can hear it in Jack Johnson’s songs; they’re like a driftwood bonfire with your friends as the sun sets, much like a laid-back alt-folk version of The Beach Boys.
He’s also back in Melbourne this December, touring the new album, playing the Myer Music Bowl, as if there isn’t a more perfect place to listen to Johnson on a warm summer evening. And as if to further illustrate what an easy going, good guy he is, all proceeds from his tour will again go to local charities, distributed by Johnson’s own All At Once Community organisation.
“We’ve been lucky,” he admits, “the albums continue to do pretty well and make a good living doing it,” Johnson says of his generosity – something that seems so stark and strange in an age of ‘me, me me’.
But, Jack Johnson is for real. As he explains of his motivations, “Playing music live is just a really fun way to gather people together and it’s just nice to be able to give back to all the communities that we play in.”
JACK JOHNSON, with support from TEGAN & SARA, will be bring his musical beach holiday to the Sidney Myer Music Bowl on Wednesday December 8. Tickets from ticketmaster.com.au and 136 100. To The Sea is out now through Brushfire/Universal.
